Obama administration must be commended for its newly announced support for the Paycheck Fairness Act (S. 182). This bill – a much needed update to the Equal Pay Act of 1963 – would take steps toward finally closing the wage gap between men and women by closing loopholes in the current law and strengthening weak remedies. Passage of the bill is one of the recommendations made by the administration’s Equal Pay Enforcement Task Force.
 
The Paycheck Fairness Act would provide workers with the tools they need to ensure equal compensation, including fair remedies, additional enforcement tools and technical assistance and training for both employers and employees. Last year, the House of Representatives overwhelmingly passed the Paycheck Fairness Act; the bill currently has 40 co-sponsors in the Senate and is poised for passage.

Here is the statement by the President –

In America today, women make up half of the workforce, and two-thirds of American families with children rely on a woman’s wages as a significant portion of their families’ income.
Yet, even in 2010, women make only 77 cents for every dollar that men earn. The gap is even more significant for working women of color, and it affects women across all education levels. As Vice President Biden and the Middle Class Task Force will discuss today, this is not just a question of fairness for hard-working women. Paycheck discrimination hurts families who lose out on badly needed income. And with so many families depending on women’s wages, it hurts the American economy as a whole. In difficult economic times like these, we simply cannot afford this discriminatory burden.
My Administration has already begun to address this problem. In my first week in office, I signed the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act, which helps women who face wage discrimination recover their lost wages, and in my State of the Union Address, I promised to crack down on violations of equal pay laws. Today the Equal Pay Enforcement Task Force will present its recommendations, which include ways to better coordinate among enforcement agencies and inform employees about their rights. These steps support women, and they also support businesses that are doing the right thing and paying their employees what they deserve.
We cannot do this work alone. So today, I thank the House for its work on this issue and encourage the Senate to pass the Paycheck Fairness Act, a common-sense bill that will help ensure that men and women who do equal work receive the equal pay that they and their families deserve. Passing this bill is one of the Task Force’s key recommendations, and I hope Congress will act swiftly so that I can sign it into law.

Nine out of 10 LGBT students report that they experience harassment at their school. Three-fifths feel unsafe at school because of their sexual orientation and one-third report that they have skipped a day of school almost every month because they feel unsafe.

ACLU brings to light three incidents that demand we need to protect our LGBT students across the country – a need more pressing than ever-

A female student in a northern California school faced daily anti-gay harassment and discrimination from teachers and school staff and was required to participate in a school-sponsored “counseling” group designed to discourage students from being lesbian, gay, bisexual, or transgender.

A male freshman at a high school in Tennessee was sent home from school for wearing a T-shirt that said, “I [Love] Lady Gay Gay.” Before that, he had long been subjected to daily anti-gay harassment at school, including threats of physical violence. He was not only unable to get help from the school, he was told by school employees that he had “brought it on himself by coming out.”

A female student in a public high school in Orange County, California was repeatedly singled out for discipline (including a one-week suspension), had her sexual orientation revealed to her family without her permission by school officials, and was forced to transfer to another school in the middle of the second semester. The student, who previously had straight-A grades and a spotless disciplinary record, was punished for occasionally showing affection towards her girlfriend, even though heterosexual students were routinely allowed to hold hands, hug and kiss on campus.

By TOM LLAMAS
For NBC New York

It’s not a crime to be beautiful or dress well, but if you ask 33-year-old Debrahlee Lorenzana they both can cost you your job.

“They pulled me aside and said I could not wear pencil skirts, turtlenecks, I cannot wear business suits that were fitted. Basically they said it drew too much attention,” says Lorenzana.

The single mom used to work for Citibank as a business banker at their branch inside the Chrysler building. She says her outfits for work were deemed “too distracting” by her male managers. They allegedly pointed to her rear and said her pants were too tight.

“Very uncomfortable,” is how Lorenzana describes those confrontations.

She says when she complained to human resources, her managers retaliated. According to her lawsuit Citibank gave her targets she could not meet because she was not properly trained. Citibank cited her work performance as a reason for termination. Left without a job Lorenzana struggled to pay the bills

“It was very hard,” says Lorenzana who fought back tears when describing a recent Christmas she celebrated with her son with no presents.

Her lawyer Jack Tuckner says at its base this case is about gender discrimination.

“It was about her being too good looking for us to bother to contain ourselves. So that’s shirt’s gotta go,” says Tuckner hypothesizing what Lorenzana’s managers thought about her clothes. “Why should we have to deal with what a babe you are? Fix it.”

In a prepared statement Citibank tells NBCNewYork:

“We believe this lawsuit is without merit and we will defend against it vigorously. We do not condone or tolerate discrimination within our business for any reason.”

Citibank also points out that all workers who face employees are given dress guidelines.

When Lorenzana was hired she signed a contract which prevents her from directly suing Citibank. So an arbitration hearin will be held. It could be months if not years before a decision is made. She is seeking future earnings, back pay, and damages for mental and emotional distress.

Tuckner says if the roles were reversed it would be very difficult to see a man being asked to changed his wardrobe for dressing and looking well in his opinion.

“Maybe they were uncomfortable with her because they didn’t feel like they could not hit on her over long periods of time. So instead they wanted her to wear a tent or a Burka,” says Tuckner.

(MYFOX NEW YORK STAFF REPORT)

Debbie Lorenzana says she lost her job at a Citibank because the men who worked there couldn’t handle her hot body.

Lorenzana, 33, is a single mom who says she has a long track record of high marks and awards from the companies where she has worked. She says her bosses at a Citibank branch in at the Chrysler Building in Manhattan told her that they couldn’t concentrate because she is too sexy.

Lorenzana says she was told she wasn’t allowed to wear turtlenecks, pencil skirts, or fitted business suits. She requested a transfer and got it, but was then fired.

Fox 5 News has contacted Citibank for a response, but as of Wednesday evening had not heard back.

The Village Voice showcased her plight with a cover story in its latest issue.

Jeff Pegues reports for Eyewitness News (ABC):

NEW YORK (WABC) — Debrahlee Lorenzana, 33, says she’s just a regular woman. But at 5’6″ and 125 pounds she definitely has movie star looks and that’s what she says got her fired from a $70,000 a year job at Citibank.

“In their exact words? Too distracting,” Lorenzana said.

Those are the words she says her bosses used to describe her. She claims that numerous times over a year long period two years ago her superiors at a Citibank Branch in the Chrysler Building would regularly demean her and discriminate against her.

She alleges the focus wasn’t on her job but on what she was wearing.

“Turtlenecks and pencil skirts, too distracting? Maybe she should wear a burqua?” Lorenzana wondered.
Lorenzana’s attorney says it’s pretty obvious what the problem was. And that’s why they’ve filed a lawsuit.

“They didn’t want to have to see a body like this,” attorney Jack Tuckner said.

But Citibank officials have responded with this statement: “We believe this lawsuit is without merit. Citi is committed to fostering a culture of inclusion and providing a respectful environment in the workplace.”

The company acknowledges that they encourage employees to dress a certain way. But Lorenzana says she dressed like other Citibank employees.

“They just said my body shape and theirs was different and mine was too distracting,” Lorenzana said.

Everything about Debrahlee Lorenzana is hot. Even her name sizzles. At five-foot-six and 125 pounds, with soft eyes and flawless bronze skin, she is J.Lo curves meets Jessica Simpson rack meets Audrey Hepburn elegance—a head-turning beauty.

Debrahlee Lorenzana. Photo by Saswat Pattanayak || WomensRightsNY.com

In many ways, the story of her life has been about getting attention from men—both the wanted and the unwanted kind. But when she got fired last summer from her job as a banker at a Citibank branch in Midtown—her bosses cited her work performance—she got even hotter. She sued Citigroup, claiming that she was fired solely because her bosses thought she was too hot.

This is the way Debbie Lorenzana tells it: Her bosses told her they couldn’t concentrate on their work because her appearance was too distracting. They ordered her to stop wearing turtlenecks. She was also forbidden to wear pencil skirts, three-inch heels, or fitted business suits. Lorenzana, a 33-year-old single mom, pointed out female colleagues whose clothing was far more revealing than hers: “They said their body shapes were different from mine, and I drew too much attention,” she says.

As Lorenzana’s lawsuit puts it, her bosses told her that “as a result of the shape of her figure, such clothes were purportedly ‘too distracting’ for her male colleagues and supervisors to bear.”

“Men are kind of drawn to her,” says Tanisha Ritter, a friend and former colleague who also works as a banker and praises Lorenzana’s work habits. “I’ve seen men turn into complete idiots around her. But it’s not her fault that they act this way, and it shouldn’t be her problem.”
Because Citibank made Lorenzana sign a mandatory-arbitration clause as a condition of her employment, the case will never end up before a jury or judge. An arbitrator will decide. Citibank officials won’t comment on the suit.

Her attorney, Jack Tuckner, who calls himself a “sex-positive” women’s-rights lawyer, is the first one to say his client is a babe. But so what? For him, it all boils down to self-control. “It’s like saying,” Tuckner argues, “that we can’t think anymore ’cause our penises are standing up—and we cannot think about you except in a sexual manner—and we can’t look at you without wanting to have sexual intercourse with you. And it’s up to you, gorgeous woman, to lessen your appeal so that we can focus!”

This isn’t your typical sexual-harassment lawsuit, if there is such a thing. For one thing, such suits often claim that women are coerced into looking more sexy or are subjected to being pawed. Lorenzana claims that her bosses basically told her she was just too attractive. And when she raised hell and refused to do anything about it—as if there was anything she really could do about it—she lost her job.

Debbie Lorenzana—whose mother is Puerto Rican and father is Italian—came to New York from Puerto Rico 12 years ago. She was 21 and pregnant, and had a degree as an emergency medical technician from a technical college in Manatí, a small city on the northern coast. The father, she says, didn’t want to have anything to do with her or the baby. So she moved back to the States, where she had lived in her mid-teens (pinballing between relatives’ houses and group homes), and took care of her elderly grandparents in Connecticut. After her son was born, she moved to Queens to stay with a friend. Then she got her first job in finance: working as a sales representative at the Municipal Credit Union, in 2002. She moved to Jersey City and worked long hours. She was successful.

In April 2003, the Municipal Credit Union named her its sales rep of the month. On the other hand, she says, a manager once called her into his office to ask her opinion of a photograph. The picture he called up on his computer was of his penis. She complained about the incident. In her June 2003 resignation letter—written just two months after she was honored as a top employee—she wrote, “Due to the complaint I made regarding sexual harassment, my work environment has become hostile, painful, and unbearable.”

She moved on to other jobs in the financial-services industry. After a stint selling health insurance to immigrants at Metropolitan Hospital in Queens, the hospital cited her in November 2003 for “providing world-class customer service” and for being the number one enroller in the office.
In August 2006, the district managers at Bank of America gave her a Customer Higher Standards Award on diploma paper, on which they wrote: “Debrahlee: You deserve to be recognized for going above and beyond.”

She says she loved to work, and eventually was earning close to $70,000 a year. “My ex-boyfriend says it’s my Spic pride,” she says. “As long as I have two hands and two legs, and can still walk, I will always work, so my son will have a roof over his head and food.”

And she will be well-dressed. Lorenzana is, by her own admission, a shopaholic. She shops for her work clothes at Zara, but when she has money, she says, she spends it on designer clothes. She has five closets full of Burberry, Hermès, Louis Vuitton, and Roberto Cavalli. In her son’s closet, there’s a row of tiny Lacoste, Dolce & Gabbana, and Ralph Lauren T-shirts. She says her love of fine clothes is a result of her growing up poor—she recalls running a high school marathon barefoot because she couldn’t afford sneakers.

Lorenzana left the workplace to get married, but that relationship went sour after a brief time, and in September 2008, she was ready to go back to work. It was the height of the Wall Street crisis, but she lucked out. She got an interview with Citibank for a job at its recently opened branch in the Chrysler Building.

At the interview, she recalls, she wore a black Armani wrap dress and simple Christian Louboutin pumps. (The dress was form-fitting and tight in the bust: She says one size up would have been too big for her.) She remembers that the branch manager, Craig Fisher, was polite, asking her about strategies for acquiring new business and whether she had other job offers. Since she already had an offer from Washington Mutual, Fisher proposed a salary of $70,000 with three weeks’ vacation, she says. Her job title was business banker, providing services to small businesses. There were three business bankers at the Chrysler Building branch; Lorenzana was the only woman.

When she started the job, she says, a colleague told her that the branch was “pretty much known for hiring pretty girls,” and that she knew Lorenzana was going to be hired from the moment she came in for her interview. “So here I am,” Lorenzana recalls, “thinking I got hired because of my capabilities, and now you’re telling me it’s because of my physical appearance? Oh, great.”

However, she liked the job, the pay, and the prospects for advancement. For the first two months, she says, she was hardly in the office—she was either out drumming up business or attending training sessions. But once she started spending more time in the office, things began to go downhill.
Interviews and her lawsuit, which was filed in November 2009, tell her story: Fisher and another manager, Peter Claibourne, started making offhanded comments about her appearance, she says. She was told not to wear fitted business suits. She should wear makeup because she looked sickly without it. (She had purposefully stopped wearing makeup in hopes of attracting less attention.) Once, she recalls, she came in to work without having blow-dried her hair straight—it is naturally curly—and Fisher told a female colleague to pass on a message that she shouldn’t come into work without straightening it.

Other problems also popped up. In order to provide services to a client, a banker needs to become certified to do things like open a checking account or take a loan application. Lorenzana says Fisher didn’t send her to enough of the required training sessions, which meant she wasn’t authorized to do something as simple as order a debit card for a client and was forced to rely on her colleagues for favors. “When I complained,” Lorenzana says, “Craig would say, ‘Just go ahead and bring in new business.’ So I went out every day and looked for business.” But then, she says, when clients would come into the branch asking for her—or would fax papers to the branch with her name on them—Fisher would give those hard-won accounts to male colleagues.
In late 2008, she recalls, the two managers called her into Fisher’s office. She remembers that she was wearing a red camisole, beige pants, and a navy suit jacket. This is how she tells it: “They said, ‘Deb, we need to talk to you about your work attire. . . . Your pants are too tight.’ I said, ‘I’m sorry, my pants are not too tight! If you want to talk about inappropriate clothes, go downstairs and look at some of the tellers!’ ”

Citibank does have a dress-code policy, which says clothing must not be provocative, but does not go into specifics, and managers have wide discretion. But Lorenzana points out that, unlike her, some of the tellers dressed in miniskirts and low-cut blouses. “And when they bend down,” Lorenzana says, “anyone can see what God gave them!”

Then the managers gave her a list of clothing items she would not be allowed to wear: turtlenecks, pencil skirts, and fitted suits. And three-inch heels. “As a result of her tall stature, coupled with her curvaceous figure,” her suit says, Lorenzana was told “she should not wear classic high-heeled business shoes, as this purportedly drew attention to her body in a manner that was upsetting to her easily distracted male managers.”
“I couldn’t believe what I was hearing,” Lorenzana recalls. “I said, ‘You gotta be kidding me!’ I was like, ‘Too distracting? For who? For you? My clients don’t seem to have any problem.’ ”

The managers instructed her to wear looser clothing. Lorenzana refused. “I don’t have the money to buy a new wardrobe,” she says, referring to her work outfits. “I shop where everyone else shops—at Zara!” Lorenzana recalls leaving the meeting feeling humiliated. Other female employees “were able to wear such clothing because they were short, overweight, and they didn’t draw much attention,” she later wrote in a letter describing the meeting to Human Resources, “but since I was five-foot-six, 125 pounds, with a figure, it wasn’t ‘appropriate.’ ” She was also furious. “Are you saying that just because I look this way genetically, that this should be a curse for me?”

That same afternoon, she says, she called Human Resources. “I felt it was inappropriate for two male managers to pull me aside like that,” she says. “I felt they were attacking me. In most places, if you are going to address a woman about anything that has to do with her personal appearance, you want to address it with a female employee there.”

In the weeks that followed, Lorenzana says she called HR up to three or four times a day. An e-mail, she says, finally brought action: A human resources manager named Morgan Putman came to the branch in January and interviewed employees. Lorenzana says she had taken two pictures of female colleagues to show HR officials. One was of a woman wearing a grayish—and very short—silk dress. The other was of a woman wearing leather boots with three-inch spike heels. “Some tellers would wear their pants so tight, it was like they had a permanent wedgie,” says Lorenzana. “It was totally inappropriate.”

After the HR visit, she says, things got markedly worse. Lorenzana says her bosses made incessant comments about her clothes. She tried to dress down in ways that didn’t involve clothes—pulling her hair back, coming to work some days without makeup, but it didn’t make a difference. “I could have worn a paper bag, and it would not have mattered,” she says. “If it wasn’t my shirt, it was my pants. If it wasn’t my pants, it was my shoes. They picked on me every single day.” Still, she continued to dress up for work—her brand of femininity is also cultural. “Where I’m from,” she says, switching into Spanish to explain it, “women dress up—like put on makeup and do their nails—to go to the supermarket. And I’m not talking trashy, you know, like in the Heights. I was raised very Latin, you know? We’re feminine. A woman in Puerto Rico takes care of herself. The Puerto Rican women here put down our flag.”

According to court documents and her letters to HR, Lorenzana continued to ask for more training sessions, but didn’t get them. Meanwhile, clients whose business she had drummed up were being handed off to her colleagues. An April 2009 quarterly report showed that she was behind the other business bankers in monthly sales credits. On June 24, she received a letter saying that she was being put on final notice, that she was bringing in too little business. But there was something strange about the letter, which was signed by Craig Fisher, and which put her on probation for six months. The letter said she had come in late on June 6 and 7. This struck her as odd. She looked at the dates. They were a Saturday and a Sunday—the branch was closed on those days. In addition to raising the issue of her bosses’ unfairly giving her business to colleagues, she pointed out those incorrect dates to Human Resources.

One day in late spring 2009, Lorenzana says, Craig Fisher told her to move some files into storage in the basement from the second floor. The previous day, she recalled, a male colleague had been given the same instructions, and because there were a lot of heavy files, he came into work in flip-flops and jeans. So she brought in flip-flops. But Fisher told her that she had to take off the flip-flops and wear high heels while moving the heavy, paper-filled boxes, her suit alleges.

The high-heels incident infuriated her, she says. She was getting worn down. On June 25, at 3:30 p.m., she sent a long-winded e-mail to two regional vice presidents whom she had never met, bypassing Morgan Putman at Human Resources. It was the kind of e-mail that could have used a proofreader, one a lawyer might advise a client not to send without some serious editing. (English is not her first language.) But she summed up her experiences with Fisher and Claibourne well and talked about “the cruelty of a hostile work environment,” where she was harassed “on a daily basis.” She ended by writing that “Mr. Fisher stated he is good friends with lots of people in the organization giving me . . . reason to believe that nothing will happen to correct the situation going on at branch 357. I have requested for the second time a transfer. . . . I came to Citibank with high expectations. Please I just want to work in a fair work environment where everyone is equal. Thank you in advance for your attention in this matter.”

The VPs never responded in writing, but she sent follow-up e-mails in which she continued to report incidents at work. Less than a month after her June 25 e-mail, she was transferred to a Citibank branch at Rockefeller Center. The way she looked or dressed didn’t draw any comments there, she says, but that branch didn’t need another business banker. In mid-July, she e-mailed Morgan Putman, thanking her for the transfer, but pointing out that she was working as a telemarketer, which wasn’t her job title.

In August, her manager at the Rockefeller Center branch—a woman—sat her down and fired her. The female manager mentioned the problems related to her clothing at the previous branch. She did not mention work performance, Lorenzana says. The manager said she was sorry, but Lorenzana wasn’t fit for the culture of Citibank.

“It’s so tiring,” Lorenzana tells the Voice. “My entire life, I’ve been dealing with this. ‘Cause people say, ‘Oh, you got a job because you look that way.’ So you gotta work four times harder to prove you are capable. To prove you didn’t get this because of the way you look. First, I’m a woman, then I’m an immigrant, and I have my accent. At Citibank, when they were picking on me for every little thing, I couldn’t take it anymore!”
After she was fired, she became depressed and began panicking about how she would afford her car payments and rent, and she applied for unemployment. Last Christmas, she and her son skipped gift-giving.

Meanwhile, she continues to receive unwanted attention. She says she gets hit on constantly and walks on the street as if she were wearing body armor: forward and straight, avoiding everyone’s gaze. “If being less good-looking,” she says, “means being happy and finding love and not being sexually harassed and having a job where no one bothers you and no one questions you because of your looks, then, definitely, I’d want that. I think of that every day.”

In preparation for the lawsuit, lawyer Jack Tuckner had a professional photographer shoot her in various work outfits in his office near Wall Street. There’s nothing wrong with the clothes—they’re proper business attire. And there’s nothing wrong with Lorenzana, who looks really, really good in them.
Obviously, that shouldn’t have anything to do with how she’s judged in the workplace. But things may not be so clear when the case goes into arbitration. The practice of making employees, as a condition of employment, opt out of their right to sue the company is a common corporate strategy. Under the city’s Human Rights Law, she has to prove that “it’s more likely than not” that Citibank created a discriminatory and hostile work environment based on gender. She must demonstrate that she was treated differently based on her sartorial choices as a female and that she was fired in close proximity to her complaints of being treated differently. Citibank also has a burden of proof: that it specifically did not create a hostile work environment based on her sex and that it fired her for legitimate, non-discriminatory reasons.

Lorenzana can rely on her testimony, her letters to HR, and the testimony of witnesses. Citibank can point to its disciplinary action—the final notice letter—but the letter punishes her for being late on days the bank wasn’t even open. (That’s the only disciplinary paper trail the Voice is aware of in this case.)
Lorenzana could prevail on either or both of these issues: a hostile work environment or retaliation. Tuckner says that in his experience with gender-discrimination cases, juries tend to be more sympathetic than arbitrators, if only because the typical arbitrator is a middle-aged man. There’s always the possibility that he’ll be too distracted by Lorenzana to focus on the evidence.

On Monday, the jury had found Novartis liable for gender discrimination in pay, promotions and pregnancy-related matters. “Today’s punitive damage award is meant to punish the company for its past actions and to deter it and others from continuing to discriminate against female employees in the future,” said Sanford Wittels & Heisler LLP.

Twelve former Novartis sales representatives were awarded $3.36 million in compensatory damages on Tuesday

This is yet another ugly example of the excesses that the deregulation of the financial services industry has wrought. When one can become freakishly wealthy by creating nothing but smoke and mirrors, it seems to promote a sort of uber mentality in the men who buy into the notion that they must indeed be very special to have so much abundance in their lives for so doing so little. It’s a god complex—the laws—whether of Nature or the Penal Code–don’t apply to them. To paraphrase Dire Straits, these guys expect their “money for nothing” and their “chicks for free.”

That’s why Guerriero had no compunction about emailing repulsive pornography and obscene text messages to a 19-year-old who idolized him for his financial prowess. Like a rich kid spoiled rotten, he’s saying, I’m so powerful and entitled, I act on every sexual impulse I have, without shame, fear or empathy for my victims.

Click here for the Complaint (PDF)

A Village Voice Exclusive by Elizabeth Dwoskin:

Suit: Raunchy Wall Street CEO Offers to Make Young Employee ‘Cumm,’ Sends Her His Jerk-Off Video, Fires Her

A sex-crazed CEO of a Wall Street investment firm turned an aspiring stockbroker’s dream job into a “raunchy, intimidating, and sexualized” workplace that literally made her sick, according to a lawsuit filed in State Supreme Court this morning.
“I wanna make u cumm like u never had is that a bad thing I know ul love it,” Thomas Guerriero, CEO and president of Guerriero Wealth Holdings Inc., texted Karen Lo, 20, this past February 2, Lo’s sex-discrimination suit claims.
When she tried to fend off his messages by saying she had a boyfriend and wanted to keep her relationship with Guerriero professional, the suit says, Guerriero subsequently texted her: “His lil dick please don’t make me touch myself thinking bou u lol at least feel me close.”

Guerriero, the founder and principal of the firm, also sent her a video showing a man masturbating to ejaculation, the suit says, and later indicated to her that he was the man in the video.
That was just part of what Lo’s suit describes as an “assaultive barrage” of text messages and the video and of actual touching, all of this taking place in the firm’s offices at 110 Wall Street.
“Guerriero had no compunction about emailing repulsive pornography and obscene text messages to a 19-year-old who idolized him for his financial prowess,” Lo’s attorney, Jack Tuckner, tells the Voice. “Like a rich kid spoiled rotten, he’s saying, ‘I’m so powerful and entitled, I act on every sexual impulse I have, without shame, fear or empathy for my victims.’ ”
“The allegations are entirely without merit,” says Brian King, an attorney for Guerriero. “This was not sexual harassment. There was some flirtation going on between her and Mr. Guerriero, but this was not sexual harassment.”
King contends that it was Lo who instigated sexual discussions between herself and other men in the office in order to trap them into saying things. “My client intends to defend this action vigorously,” says King. “Her comments are manufactured in order to gain unwarranted financial windfall.”
Lo, a student at SUNY-Stony Brook, was hired in October 2009 as an entry-level stockbroker, working for the firm on Fridays, Saturdays, and Mondays.
She “aspired to emulate Guerriero’s professional trajectory,” her suit says. But the barrage began immediately. She fended off every advance, saying she wanted to keep things “professional.”
“I tried to keep everything he did separate from my work, because it really was my dream,” she tells the Voice. “It was really uncomfortable, but, at the end of the day, it was really my dream job . . . because I guess he would be like the shepherd leading me to wealth and success.”
With a few nightmares thrown in, according to her suit. Even after she stopped replying to his texts, the suit says, he continued to text her. He also touched her legs and left a Post-It note with a sexual message on her desk, says Tuckner. Subsequently, the suit says, she got this text message from him: “I know deep down u are curious how I could feel lol I love touching ur legs when ur near me ur sexy . . . I had a dream about u it was so real lol.”
In another example cited in the suit, when Lo sent her boss an email with a link to a news story about Wall Street bonuses, he wrote her back a note in which he said that he was thinking of her when he was drunk at a spa the previous night, and that he wanted to record and send her “another video,” but “wasn’t sure” how much she liked the last one. “I would like to try to keep things professional still,” the desperate Lo replied.
Lo, under what the suit calls “severe emotional and psychological distress,” sought counseling. In mid-February, she was fired.
Guerriero Wealth Holdings describes itself on the web as specializing in “trading and investment strategies for high net-worth individuals, professional investors, hedge funds, money managers, and institutional investors.”
Guerriero’s bio says he is a former senior vice president at First Union National Bank, now part of Wachovia. Guerriero Wealth Holdings boasts an internship program, a fellowship program, and a “Guerriero Institute of Finance.”
In the promotional material, there’s a clear emphasis on recruiting young brokers. “Mr. Guerriero’s unique ability to recruit, train, and mentor service professionals has made his training and development program one of the best in the industry,” the site says.
In a 2005 profile of Guerriero in Black Tie International, headlined “Leading the Way to Wall Street’s New Era,” he’s quoted as saying, “I believe the most successful people in this industry are the ones that refuse to be satisfied. And are willing to go that extra mile to set a new standard of excellence.”

World’s largest retailer is about to face the largest class action suit in American history. Status quo of Walmart Stores Inc., thus far maintained through several expensive public relations campaigns and television advertorials, has been challenged by this lawsuit representing interests of more than 1 million women. In a case that will unveil the extent to which corporate America has institutionalized systemic sexism, Walmart and its likes will most likely demand a review, an appeal or shameless dismissal.

Women Challenge Wal-Mart

Indeed, Walmart has no shame. Its official statement is irresponsible and unrealistically far from the ground: “We do not believe the claims….Walmart is an excellent place for women to work and fosters female leadership among our associates and in the larger business world.”

In its defense, Walmart has clearly taken shelter within the ideology of market capitalism pervading the “larger business world” – a genre of trade policies that has resulted in enormous costs to human dignity, labor and unity. Capitalistic “free” market economy in America has consistently been anti-worker, especially, anti-women. Despite countless judicial interventions and feministic endeavors to ensure equality at workplaces, corporate America continues to treat women workers as invisible and their labor unworthy of rewards. As a result, women in 2010 still earn about 79 cents for every dollar men earn. For women of color, it is way less.

As the most prolific representative of global capitalism, Walmart has an extraordinary share in maintaining existing gender inequalities. Walmart has $405 billion in annual sales, 2 million employees, more than 8,400 stores. Between the Waltons (Christy, Jim, Alice, Robson), personal assets of the owners of Walmart run over $80 billion – the richest private wealth accumulation ever in the world.

From time to time, corporations like Walmart (and Sam’s Club which it owns) have hired more women and workers from various minorities groups. But this is usually done in order to enhance profits through cheaper labor standards. Ironically, thus emancipated class – women and other minorities – prove to be the instruments for higher profits of the unregulated corporations.

After hiring cheaper alternatives in the form of women and members of minorities in their native country of operations, corporations like Walmart then globalize their exploitative expansions for even cheaper labor alternatives to maximize profits. So in Mexico, Walmart becomes Walmex, in the UK, it is Asda, in Japan, it becomes Seiyu and in India it is Best Price. Walmart successfully hires cheaper labors also in China, Argentina, Brazil, Puerto Rico, Canada, among others.

A crucial way of challenging anti-worker policies of Walmart and its likes, is for the workers to join labor unions. And this is one area where the Walton families have excelled in choking human liberties. Walmart has consistently maintained anti-union stances, exposed employees to health hazards, locked in night-shift workers and paid employees below minimum wage. With the forced absence of workers unions, Walmart has ensured that workers get paid below poverty line minimum wage to maintain families and yet have no right to challenge it in an organized manner. And most famously, Wal-mart has opposed the pro-worker Employee Free Choice Act.

The working class of the world needs for this lawsuit to prevail, not merely to send a signal to a corporation that undervalues its employees, but also to encourage all workers to join in solidarity to radically challenge and upstage profiteering monopolists everywhere.

By Kiri Blakeley, FORBES
You can take time off for health or child care issues, but where’s the corporate understanding about work disruption due to relationship turmoil?

When news broke that Sandra Bullock’s husband, Jesse James, was allegedly having an affair with a tattooed biker model, Bullock pulled out of the London premiere of her Oscar-winning movie, The Blind Side. A premiere without a film’s star might as well not be a premiere, so the studio kiboshed the entire thing. As the cheating scandal widened, Bullock canceled several other overseas premieres and an appearance on the Kids Choice Awards.

Media appearances, press junkets and premieres are generally not optional for a celebrity–they are often contractually obligated or, at the very least, considered a necessary part of the job.

Bullock is fortunate that not only does her studio, Warner Brothers, seem to be supportive of her time off, but she is also a big enough star that she’s in no danger of being rendered unemployable in the future over her ditched duties. A less bankable actor would likely not have had the same option.

And what about us average wage slaves? While it is generally acceptable in the workplace to take time off due to health reasons, child care issues, or the well-being of a parent, there is often scant corporate understanding when it comes to work disruption as a result of divorce, breakup or even general relationship turmoil.

Walking into your boss’ office and saying you’d like to take a few days off because your mother is sick (something I did in the past year) is a little different from saying you need to come to terms with the idea that your husband is schtupping a series of bimbos. Should this kind of time off be more widely available and acceptable?

Mental health experts seem divided over the issue. Irina Firstein, a New York City therapist with 20 years’ experience, says that relationship trouble should not be given the same leeway in the workplace as health issues. “These events, while very traumatic, don’t require a long time off work,” she says. “In fact, I think it is most helpful to try and continue your usual activities. This takes away some of the focus and energy on obsessively dwelling on one’s pain.”

Taking the opposite tack is Sally Wright, Ph.D., a consultant for clients like the American Psychotherapy Association, who says, “Situations involving relationship breakup are every bit as mentally and emotionally taxing as those which are characterized as ‘acceptable’ reasons. In fact they are often more difficult to deal with.”

Yet there persists the corporate and societal bias that relationship issues are not “serious,” despite reams of research indicating that divorce is on par with death in terms of emotional devastation. The Family Medical Leave Act covers certain employees whose parents or children are ill, but those suffering emotional woes take their chances when going up against an employer.

Labor attorney Jack Tuckner, who specializes in women’s rights in the workplace, represented a 26-year-old New York City woman who was fired from her company after taking nearly a month off work after her live-in boyfriend abruptly dumped her. “[The company] called her ‘weak-minded,’” says Tuckner, who settled the woman’s case.

Tuckner advises those who may need to take time off due to personal issues be honest but vague with your employer (don’t divulge all the dirty details), give your boss a time-line of when you plan to return to work (two to three weeks off is about as much as one can reasonably expect), and to document your emotional state through a doctor or mental health professional. Even then, he warns, you still risk being marginalized at work after such a leave of absence.

But perhaps the tide is shifting. The human rights laws in some states and cities require that employers must accommodate reasonable requests due to mental anxiety, and those laws are beginning to be interpreted more broadly. “Mental suffering is getting closer to being a covered disability,” says Pryor Cashman labor attorney Josh Zuckerberg. But emotional distress isn’t protected in the clear-cut way that, say, blindness is.

However, there are decent compromises that employers can make to allow employees to regain emotional footing while not being forced into the role of emotional hand-holder. Heather Gatley, who oversees human resources for staffing firm AlphaStaff, says she has seen an increase in companies that offer personal time off (PTO)–to be taken for whatever reasons, no explanation necessary–in place of sick days or vacation time. Says Gately: “It’s unreasonable to expect that employees won’t need time off every once in awhile to attend to personal issues–whether renewing a driver’s license or nurturing a broken heart.”

Still, says Gately, even employers who offer PTO can require that those who want to take advantage of it give notice “as far in advance as is possible.” Unfortunately, one can never quite plan when you may discover your spouse or partner is a cheating low life.

Kiri Blakeley is a writer who lives in Brooklyn, N.Y. Her book, Can’t Think Straight: A Memoir of Mixed-Up Love, will be published in January 2011.